One woman's exploration of birth

Main menu

Tag Archives: Julia Rogers

Here, just in time for Mother's Day, is a little known story about the enterprise that has set the bar for the practice of medicine in America. When all was said and done, it was women who served as midwives for the dream.

And, it was a woman who insisted on the high standards that have made Johns Hopkins Medicine the paragon it has been.

Women attended medical school in the 19th century; there were even medical schools just for women. However, women had a hard time being taken seriously at most of the top medical schools -- and that is an understatement.

The exception was Johns Hopkins, where three women were part of the first class, and where women have been part of the student body straight through to the present -- very unusual, given all the changes that occurred in medical education early in the 20th century. (More on that in future posts.)

What made the difference? At a crucial point, a savvy, determined group of women held the pursestrings.

Garrett, who contributed the bulk of the money herself, further demanded that medical-school candidates have a college degree with a concentration in basic science, and be able to speak and read French, German and Latin.

William Welch himself had proposed these requirements years before but they had been dismissed as unrealistic. Now every Hopkins undergraduate, male and female, would have to meet them. As William Osler joked to Welch, "It is lucky that we got in as professors; we could never enter as students."

Of the women in that first class, one quit to become a Christian Scientist and one married her anatomy professor. Only Mary Packard became a doctor. Years later, though, Welch wrote, "We regard co-education a success; those of us who were not enthusiastic at the beginning are now sympathetic and friendly."